Saturday was magical day at Children's Museum of Evansville

DENNY SIMMONS / Courier & Press
"It's all right for you to be the flower," Rowen Kalvar, 4, told her granddad, Claude Brock, while playing "make-believe" at the Koch Family Children's Museum of Evansville on Saturday afternoon. The two visiting Louisville, Ky., residents were taking part in the Alice in Wonderland portion in the Freedom Gallery. The museum was hosting "Step into a Story" as part of National Read a New Book Month. Jack and the Beanstalk and Harry Potter were other featured book stations CMOE offered.

DENNY SIMMONS / Courier & Press

EVANSVILLE - From chemistry and science to Muggles and magicians, Saturday marked the Magical Museum Day at the Children's Museum of Evansville.

Youngsters started the day on the museum's third floor for some hands-on magic activities inspired by the hugely popular Harry Potter series.

First the children learned how to make their own Butterbeer, a popular drink recipe among wizards. The drink consist of one cup creme soda, one tablespoon butterscotch ice cream syrup and one tablespoon butter.

According to the book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the drink can be purchased at the Hog's Head for two sickles a bottle. Author J.K. Rowling says she imagines "it to taste a little bit like less-sickly butterscotch."

Next in line came the chance for the children to make their own pair of Harry Potter spectacles out of a variety of different-colored pipe cleaners, followed by their own magical wand at Oliver's Wand Shop.

Wands were made from wooden sticks and customized with satin ribbon and plastic stars on the tips. Wands are tools for wizards to channel their powers and according to the books, the wands choose the wizards, and it is not clear why.

Youngsters then fashioned their own quills, a writing instrument made from feathers whose tips are cut into a point. They are standard utensils in wizardry, unlike pencils and pens used in the Muggle world.

After all their tools were crafted, the last activity for the aspiring wizards was to sample some magic jelly beans from a hat and plot their favorite flavor on a poster board to be displayed in the museum.

For the day's finale, children sat in the theater-like Freedom Gallery on the first floor for a magic show put on by the museum's education coordinator Lyndsie Fughe who demonstrated several nifty tricks with common household items.

Fughe showed how a black light works, running the bulb across her arms revealing stars and stripes applied with invisible ink. Her second act involved dropping an Alka-Seltzer tablet into a mixture of cooking oil and green-water, resulting in a lava-lamp reaction of bubbles floating to the surface.

She then showed the children the classic Cartesian diver experiment. The trick involves taking an eye dropper half full of water and placing it into an airtight 2-liter bottle filled with water. By squeezing the bottle firmly, the eyedropper floats up and down, giving the appearance that the person is commanding the inanimate object.

In the final act, Fughe demonstrated the science behind static electricity by rubbing a plastic tube through her hair until it had enough static electricity to attract a wad of Christmas tinsel. When done properly, the tinsel floats above the tube for several seconds.

Children appeared stunned by the floating tinsel and 4-year-old Natalie Shepardson said it was her favorite part of the show. She said she would like to be a magician when she grows up.

Fughe planned the day as part of National Read a Book Month with a focus on books dealing with fairy tales and magic. She feels it is important that children are exposed to this genre.

"When you're a little kid, and for me as well, you just have a natural curiosity about the world around you," said Fughe. "Almost everything seems like magic at some point."

Fughe went on to say, "Sometimes I think make-believe offers a more exciting alternative to them for an explanation of how things work."

She said the museum tries to do magic-oriented events at least once a month and plans on bringing in renowned local magician Don Baggett for a Noon Years Day celebration, called so because children have bedtimes that prevent them from celebrating New Years at midnight.